The Child in Church : Part 4

The American Child
by Elizabeth McCracken

(Page 10 of 13)

"Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it; But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit."

Then another small girl said her grace, which was Herrick's: -

"Here a little child I stand, Heaving up my either hand; Cold as paddocks though they be, Here I lift them up to Thee, For a benison to fall On our meat and on us all Amen."

The next little girl said Stevenson's: -

"It is very nice to think The world is full of meat and drink, And little children saying grace In every Christian kind of place."

The succeeding little guests said the dear and familiar "blessing" of so many children: -

"For what we are about to receive, O Lord, make us truly thankful."

My little friend into whose life so grievous a sorrow had come was the last to say her grace. It was the poem of Miss Josephine Preston Peabody entitled "Before Meat: -

"Hunger of the world. When we ask a grace Be remembered here with us, By the vacant place.

"Thirst with nought to drink, Sorrow more than mine, May God some day make you laugh, With water turned to wine!"

There was a silence when she finished, among the children as well as among the grown persons present. "I don't quite understand what your grace means," the little girl of the house said at last to her small guest.

"It means that I still have my mamma, and she still has me," replied the child. "Some people haven't anybody. It means that; and it means we ask God to let them have Him. My mamma told me, when she taught it to me to say instead of the grace I used to say when we had my papa."

The little girl explained with the simple seriousness and sweetness so characteristic of the answers children make to questions asked them regarding things in any degree mystical. The other small girls listened as sweetly and as seriously. Then, with one accord, they returned to the gay delights of the occasion. They were a laughing, prattling, eagerly happy little party, and of them all not one was more blithe than the little girl who had said grace last.

The child's intimate companionship with her mother in the sorrow which was her sorrow too had not taken from her the ability for participation in childish happiness, also hers by right. Was not this because the companionship was of so deep a nature? The mother, in letting her little girl share her grief, let her share too the knowledge of the source to which she looked for consolation. Above all, she not only told her of heavier sorrows; she told her how those greater griefs might be lightened. Children in America enter into so many of the things of their parents' lives, is it not good that they are given their parts even in those spiritual things that are most near and sacred?

I have among my friends a little boy whose father finds God most surely in the operation of natural law. Indeed, he has often both shocked and distressed certain of his neighbors by declaring it to be his belief that nowhere else could God be found. "His poor wife!" they were wont to exclaim; "what must she think of such opinions?" And later, when the little boy was born, "That unfortunate baby!" they sighed; "how will his mother teach him religion when his father has these strange ideas?" That the wife seemed untroubled by the views of her husband, and that the baby, as he grew into little-boyhood, appeared very similar to other children as far as prayers and Bible stories and even attendance at church were concerned, did not reassure the disturbed neighbors. For the child's father continued to express - if possible, more decidedly - his disquieting convictions. "Evidently, though," said one neighbor, "he doesn't put such thoughts into the head of his child."

Apparently he did not. I knew the small boy rather intimately, and I was aware that his father, after the custom of most American parents, took the child into his confidence with regard to many other matters. The little boy was well acquainted with his father's political belief, for example. I had had early evidence of this. But it was not until a much later time, and then indirectly, that I saw that the little boy was possessed too of a knowledge of his father's religious faith.

I was ill in a hospital a year or two ago, and the little boy came with his mother to see me. A clergyman happened to call at the same time. It was Sunday, and the clergyman suggested to my small friend that he say a psalm or a hymn for me.

"My new one, that daddy has just taught me?" the child inquired, turning to his mother.

She smiled at him. "Yes, dearest," she said gently.

The little boy came and stood beside my bed, and, in a voice that betokened a love and understanding of every line, repeated Mrs. Browning's lovely poem: -

"They say that God lives very high! But if you look above the pines, You cannot see our God. And why?